Better Off Dead
by Life's scar
Summary: [Four Brothers] The van wasn’t sent to send the shooters to gun the family down no, Sweet had thought of a way to hurt them without drawing attention to himself. The men in the van held guns but their orders weren’t to kill they were to retrieve the weak
1. Chapter 1

Title: Better Off Dead

Rating: R

Fandom: Four Brothers

Pairing: Maybe some, maybe not, we'll see how the story drags me. I'm no stranger to slash so it's strong possibilities, it really depends if the story line allows it or needs it, if not, if it'll make it crap then there will be none.

Warning: Will contain sensitive material, sensitive situations that should not be taken lightly and if I do my job will not be taken lightly on my part.

Summary: The van wasn't sent to send the shooters to gun the family down; no, Sweet had thought of a way to hurt them without drawing attention to himself. The men in the van held guns but their orders weren't to kill; they were to retrieve the weakest one… the one he would have more fun with.

Prologue

As soon as Bobby realized that Jack was no longer in the house he rushed outside. How stupid could the boy be? He was too young, too naïve to be in any part of this. He didn't understand that you had to tear every small thing apart to see if there was any chance of danger. Why did he bring the kid into this quest for revenge, this wasn't his life. It never had been; he had never been like the other Mercer boys.

He couldn't just rush out of the house without thinking.

Silent prayers left his brain as he yelled for Jack to come back, praying that nothing happened to the younger man. The last thing he needed was to be taking care of someone while trying to take Sweet out. At least that's what he was telling himself even though he knew it was because he never could stand to see Jack hurt.

Every time Jack would come back from school sporting a new bruise his heart would always twist and then he would of course go and get his revenge on the pathetic school bullies to show them not to mess with a mercer and to teach them not to fuck with his heart.

He hated that feeling and only Ma or Jack could bring him to that.

Jack was his weak spot, all of theirs actually. Some of it had to do with the fact that he was the baby of the family but most if, for Bobby at least, was he still held an air of innocence around him that lightened his mood a bit, that made him feel more… innocent himself. He refused to let someone take that away from Jake. All four of them had been through shit before Ma had taken them in; they had all visited hell on more than a few occasions and lived through it. Each of them had tasted the different aspects of it but Bobby feared that Jack had gotten the worse; scrawny little pretty boys always did. And despite it all Jack had still come out holding some form of innocence that the others had not escaped with.

Bobby saw the van coming and his feet hit the ground faster, the pounding filling his ear drums, desperately wanting, needing, to get to Jack. He could almost see it as Jack was gunned down before his eyes as the worst case scenario played in his head. He watched as the men jumped out, each brandishing fully loaded guns and he instantly reached for his, hating himself for not giving Jack one out of his misguided judgment. He figured if Jack never held a gun he would never kill someone and there would always be his innocent little Jackie.

Why didn't he give Jack one so he could protect himself? Why?

He heard shots ring out, not as many as there should have been and he realized too late that they weren't here to kill them. He ordered Jack to run back to him, his voice deep with urgency, but it was already too late, there was no chance for Jack to get away. His only chance in hell was for him to hold off the attackers until Bobby got by his side and was able to fight off the would-be-kidnappers.

He watched as more than a few men tackled Jack to the ground.

He watched as they struggled to restrain him.

He watched this all happen before his eyes all the while he quickly ran to try and get to him.

Jack's foot connected with one of the guys balls and Bobby cheered him on as he attempted to shoo the others down, diving for cover when a bullet flew by his head too close for comfort.

He heard Jack scream his name in terror, the sound tearing his heart to pieces. He saw the barrel of a gun slam into the back of the kid's head and he knew with a sinking hear that there was no way to save him in time. So, while shooting some of the men down he watched as Jack was thrown roughly into the Van.

He watched as it left, leaving the wounded behind to deal with the Mercer's that were left or the cops. It was their own decisions who would be worse. For a moment Bobby sneered knowing they were all hoping for the cops to get to them first.

Moments later he felt Angel's hand come to rest on his shoulder, tearing his eyes from the spot where the van had been. He was still lost in the shock of it all as Angel helped him stand, his hands shaking as the gun fell from his hand.

He heard it hit the soft snow, he knew it shouldn't have made a sound but all he heard was a loud bang as if it had hit glass and shattered the delicate design.

He would get him back.

He knew he would no doubts about it.

"Call the police," He hissed to Angel, glaring past Angel before turning to him, "A bullet better not have hit my tires because I'm about to go get Jackie back."

TBC

Okay, so this is just the prologue so that's why it's so short. I apologize for the shortness and the fact that it's pretty much the summary just longer. The first chapter will skip in time just a little bit, not much but just a little bit and will be longer than this.

Like I said up above, this will contain sensitive material so if you don't like it then please, don't read it.

I hope you like this, this idea has been bugging me and it's actually a realistic alternative to Jack dying I believe… I hope.

Thank you for reading.

Kay


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Better Off Dead

Rating: R

Fandom: Four Brothers

Pairing: Maybe some, maybe not, we'll see how the story drags me. I'm no stranger to slash so it's strong possibilities, it really depends if the story line allows it or needs it, if not, if it'll make it crap then there will be none.

Warning: Will contain sensitive material, sensitive situations that should not be taken lightly and if I do my job will not be taken lightly on my part.

Summary: The van wasn't sent to send the shooters to gun the family down; no, Sweet had thought of a way to hurt them without drawing attention to himself. The men in the van held guns but their orders weren't to kill; they were to retrieve the weakest one… the one he would have more fun with.

a href"http/ Prologue /a 

lj-cute text"Chapter One" 

Chapter One

When Jack's eyes slid open he wished they never had. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw he was in a damp, cold basement a fear shot through his heart that he had never felt before. Fear because even with beatings from his parents and various foster parents there was never a chance of death. If he had died then there would be no money for them.

He would die here because there was only one person who would have him.

And that one person wanted revenge.

Revenge. A cold, harsh word; a word that could be seen as some playful jokes or something that could make your blood curdle with fear.

He had his mind set on the revenge of his mother's death.

Now Sweet had his mind set on the death of him and his brothers.

Who would revenge their death when it was all said and done? If he died his three brother's would revenge his death with their mother's. If they failed and Sweet prevailed then there was no one left of their family that would revenge their death.

Or would the numerous kids that his mother had befriended and saved revenge them when they grew older only to continue the cycle when Sweet's children felt the same desire to get those who had killed their father.

Death left hearts broken and only lead to more death.

It was a vicious cycle and somehow he wished he didn't have to be part of it. For the first time in his life he wanted to live for awhile, live until he was old and withered and age was the one that took him away not a malicious hand, cold and sweaty as they did a deed and didn't think any thing else of it.

All the times before in his life when he had considered death he had either wished it would snatch him away as quickly as it could in the dark, so he could leave his aching, broken body behind and just float or that it would come before the future became too uncertain for him, before he was too lost that he became hopeless.

The uncertainty of the future scared him even though he would let no one know that.

It terrified him.

His fingers twitched as he wrapped them around his knees, pulling them close to his chest in an attempt to keep the cold that was penetrating his skin out, to try and keep some part of him warm because he knew if he didn't, if he didn't accept and the cold sunk in so deep that it froze his heart than there would be no need to be saved because he wouldn't ever come out to protect himself.

He would become a rag doll like he had so many years ago, so many times before.

It seemed like another lifetime when he had been forced to just give in, to become nothing. It had been another lifetime for as soon as Ma took him in he started anew… well as soon as he realized he wasn't going anywhere so he better settle in because despite the drugs he had brought into her house, that would be flushed down the toilet the instant they were found.

Bobby usually found them under Ma's strict order's as she struggled to make sure he kept his dazed eyes open, afraid he had overdosed. She was the only one who would lovingly wrap her arms around him, and lead him back up to his bedroom while swearing up and down as soon as he came down from his blissful high there'd be hell to pay.

He never was afraid of death before; he tempted it often as he snorted whatever drug he could get his hands on, not caring how much he took at a time or where it came from and what was in it.

The hell to pay afterwards wasn't as bad as she would swear it would be though, maybe it was his dulled down sense of things. He knew Ma would never beat him like he had been before… never do anything that had been done to him before, even in his half awareness he knew that but, without fail, every time she'd say that he would imagine her chasing him with a broom or a belt because he had always been around that. A belt slapping across his bare ass wasn't abuse to him, and a broom… well a broom was a fright tactic that was often used against him by the nicer but less sane of the various foster mothers he had had.

As long as, at the end of the night, he wasn't left bleeding and crying, clenching a broken bone to himself than it wasn't abuse to him. Sometimes, when he was feeling more thoughtful than other times and he realized that it just might be, he feared that when and if he ever had kids that he would end up like all those people he had lived with.

Then he realized that all he had to do was live off of Ma's example and him and his family, if he so chose to actually have one… if he lived to have one, would be fine.

The worst part of Ma's so called 'hell' was her lecturing, it went without fail for a guilt trip to be thrown into the whole mix about how they were bad for him and this was a chance for a new life for him, that he didn't have to act the way he had before, that he could be just like everyone else… happy without the drugs, without flying.

Then he would be sent to clean the whole house and the small yard. She never expected it to be perfect, but he always sat on his hands and knees scrubbing every floor until his knuckles were raw from accidentally scrapping them against the floor so many times when he would get lost in his own though. She would always tell him to stop when she would see the state that he was in, sweating, over-exerting himself after his breath touch with death the night before on the very brink of an overdose but he refused even if she yelled at him again.

He refused to stop because the guilt trip always worked way to well to his weakened mind and he was determined he owed a spotless house to her at least.

Needless to say, the house was spotless on more than a few occasions before she stopped telling him to clean the house after one time and just sent him to his room to stay for the next month. That didn't stop him though, she found him the same night, scrubbing the bathroom in the middle of the night.

He had finally decided to stop the hard drugs, for both his and Ma's sanity because he doubted that his hands would ever heal if he kept on rubbing them against the hardwood floors and dumping random chemicals on the open wounds when he went to clean the bathrooms and kitchen.

She was there the whole time he went through the withdrawals, rubbing his back as he puked and resting cold clothes on his head as his body went through drastic temperature changes. She was there the whole time, whispering to him how proud she was that he finally decided to stop.

She was probably the only mother who would ever tell her son that she was proud of him while he was shaking in the thralls of a strong withdrawal.

He started calling her Ma after that because he realized she must love him if she would do that for him.

If she was willing to take care of him even if all the symptoms he was going through were his own fault.

He knew she knew he had kept the weed, that he never stopped smoking it but he also knew that she knew it was not near as often as he had done it before. He had convinced himself that she was happy that considering how many drugs he had been hooked to when he had walked through her door that he had stopped all but one.

Of course he picked up smoking at the early age to get past a lot of the urges.

She wasn't happy about that at all.

The urge was always there but he would force them away just for her. He'd done anything to make her happy because she deserved all the joy in the world for giving kids like him some hope in life.

He had actually succeeded in overdosing once. An old foster father was trying to get him back, claiming he missed the child so much he just wanted to adopt him… this had been before Ma had adopted him.

He never wanted to see the 'man' again much less live with him after the six months he spent in a true hell with him. Ma had promised him he would be safe and he was fighting everyway he knew how to make her keep to that promise.

No one knew what had gone in many of the foster homes he had been to. He never told his social worker or anything, he acted like everything that went on was normal… when he knew it wasn't normal but he wasn't' brave enough to speak up. He knew he would be transferred soon enough so it was no matter to him.

The same night he had been transferred to live with him until his adoption papers were final he was in the hospital.

He wasn't quiet that night because he knew that this was it, this would be the rest of his life there was no hope for a brief interval between . So when the neighbors heard screaming they instantly called the police… or after it didn't stop and they wanted to sleep. By the time they got there he was laying naked, in a pool of his own blood with a syringe laying by his side.

Before that night he had never shot up; he had always just stayed with snorting. He never shot up again either though.

When he finally woke up a week later Ma was sitting there, crying as she held his hand and he knew she knew everything that had happened that night. She hadn't known he was awake when he told her he was sorry. Without saying it she knew, she understood what he was saying sorry for and she just shook her head as he kept repeated it. Sorry that he wasn't strong enough, sorry that he fell back onto his old means of escape… sorry that he was worrying her… hurting her.

He had never heard her speak so strictly before as she wrapped her arms around him and told he wasn't to be sorry for any of this and if he kept apologizing to her she was going to pop him in the head.

Without her realizing it she had actually began to pick up some of Bobby's habits of speech.

Later that day Bobby had come to visit him, without Ma's permission because he wanted to visit Jack alone. That day he showed Jack that he cared; that he was his brother even if there was a chance that he would be put in an institution before going back home to Ma.

All Bobby said was "It's just a small step backwards, that's all Jackie, don't let that make you fall all the way back."

Jack was jerked away from his memories as he heard a door open and light flooded the room, causing him to squint painfully as he tried to see who was coming in. His back found it's self pressed tightly against the wall as he scooted back, fearing shooting through his veins.

Because he wasn't sure if this was the end or not.

And the uncertainty of it all scared him more than the thought of death did.

TBC

There we were, just a lot of thinking in this chapter, next chapter I'll bring Bobby back in, I just didn't want to change to Bobby in the middle of this chapter.

The hardest part was just beginning this chapter, trying to decide where to start off, if I should start off with Bobby or with Jack and then just if it should be thoughts, like a deeper look into the character or action. I hate beginning chapters.

I hope you like this and it didn't disappoint anyone.

Thank you all for your reviews, D love you to pieces for taking the time to review.

Kay


	3. Chapter 3

Better Off Dead

Chapter Two

Bobby's face was grim as he drove down the long, snow covered streets; his knuckles a matching white against the steering wheel as he attempted to control his speed, refusing to get pulled over and delayed any. He knew how to work the system. He knew how to get whatever his black little heart desired and right now he wanted Jack back home.

He had had Angel's slut call the school to see if Sweet's children had shown up that day. How surprising it is when a little, well-planned, white lie works in an elementary school that prides it's self on student safety actually works.

They were at school so they wouldn't provide a problem to his plans. Despite what many people believed there is a decent bone in his body and he saw no need nor desire to harm their father in anyway in front of their innocent eyes and possible cause irreversible damage to their fragile minds. He was more decent than some men in this world who were perceived as the pure vision of kindness and love when they were nothing other than cheaters and destroyers.

He was already set in his ways, his mind had already been shaped into what it was, when Ma had taken him in yet she was smart enough to realize that this could not be changed, all she could do was teach him what was right and hope it settled in somewhere among his morals or lack there of. She was one of the smartest women in this world and if anyone dared to deny this they would receive his fist in their face.

Had the kids not been in school it wouldn't have stopped him though; he would not allow Jackie to spend anymore time in Sweet's captivity. He would have only tried and convince the kids to run along to their rooms. The house was big enough anyways.

A soft growl left his throat as he remembered Angel tackling him to the ground, refusing to allow Bobby to instantly rush off to save Jackie at four in the morning with no plan or thought in his mind other than to bring the princess back to the house he belonged in.

Back to the safety of Ma's home.

The turn he took onto the street was a dangerous one, nearly spinning his car out of control and into a light pole that should have been there in the first place but he refused for any mistakes to claim his life or Jackie's.

He was in the house before anymore thoughts could take over his mind only to be greeted by an eerie silence that chilled him deeply inside. His steps echoed off of the tiled floor, his fingers itching to knock anything expansive down and shattering it out of childish spite.

He listened for any sound that would let him in on the location where Sweet was residing, listening for even the smallest sound of doors sliding shut.

He didn't have to wait long for a sound to fill the house but it was one he would rather not have heard in his life time, almost equal to Jack screaming for Bobby to help him. The sound tore at his heart, attempting to rip it straight from his chest, stopping it instantly. He chocked on a sickness that boiled inside of his stomach at the pained scream that erupted from below him.

The terrified voice of his younger brother pleading, begging for something to stop.

His feet moved quickly, as if he were on the ice again, towards the open door in front of him, revealing stairs that lead downstairs into the basement.

The gun was in his hand instantly as the full effect of the scene he walked in on fell onto him, shocking him only for a moment. His eyes locked on the half naked form of Sweet hovering over the prone shape of his brother.

The anger he had been holding in boiled over and the trigger was pulled without even aiming. It hit its mark with no problem though, the corpse now falling beside the shivering boy.

Bobby's hands moved quickly as he threw down a rather large bag next to Sweet's bleeding body before moving to pull the tight pants back up his brother's quivering body. They wrapped around the thin back, pulling him close as his a few of his own silent tears fell down his cheeks. Tears that were for Jack and Jack only.

And then he was up, cradling Jackie to him much like a mother would her child or a fireman his victim, up the stairs and out the front door before any of the neighbors could even think of calling the police over the sound.

They would find the body, the drugs laying in close proximity, and write it off as a deal gone sour. No one would worry about his death except those that Sweet had controlled, and after a few days any worries would die down as the power forces rearranged and someone took Sweet's place.

Bobby knew the structures of the gangs. Which meant he knew that there was no loyalty in this one. The smell of power and money that was now sitting open in the wake of Sweet's death would easily catch the noises of Sweet's greedy friends and the Mercer brothers would be left alone until another time.

Long enough for Bobby to help Jackie recover once again.

TBC

Really don't like this chapter at all but it's been so long since I updated this that I really owed you even as forced as it was. I somehow hope that you see this chapter better than I do, but I doubt it.

I attempted to write this chapter in a different form than I usually write, which might be way I don't like it. I tried to get it out as if it were Bobby's thoughts, not just an oministic (I so can't spell that word right, and I've butchered it so bad that spell check can't even fix it, The God like) point of view but third person based solely on Bobby. If that makes an sense… it makes sense in my head but who the fuck knows if it does out.

Thank you all for the reviews, I love them to pieces, you have no idea.

Kay


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